The fact that this copy comes with the exquisitely-tooled pay-off line 'As endorsed by Paul Collingwood' might have you thinking the whole thing is a wind-up, a discerning howl in the dark at the inexorable attachment of marketing bollocks to something as noble and beautiful as the cricket bat, but alas no. It's real.

The need to re-sell a product that has limited opportunities for redesign or innovation has led to the heightened language manufacturers are using, yet what they really need is a different kind of gimmick. Like any natural thing, willow comes in cycles, it has good years and bad. Maybe they should start selling it like wine, by vintage. 2009 - now that was a helluva year...

4 comments:

Narkins
said...

I finally realised I needed a new bat towards the end of the summer after my dads old bat which is only a couple of years younger than my 20 year old self.

So I started looking and pretty quickly the way they were selling them almost put me off. What I wanted was a chunk of wood which when correctly used to hit a leather ball lobbed at me would send it flying. I wasn't trying to buy a piece of the LHC.

Since men make up the majority of the market, perhaps they should try the Lynx approach. Plug-ugly cricker takes up Slazenger BabeMagnet 3000, smacks the ball over the boundary plop into the ample cleavage of admiring spectator Lily Allen... Strapline: Slazenger Bowls a Maiden Over/No Balls? Get a Slazenger.. etc etc you get the idea.

Narkins, I've come to the conclusion the way to do it is to enter the shop, blindfold yourself and just pick the things up until one sings in your hands. If it ends up bearing the inertial design that's made colly's summer so spectacular, well, you know it's meant to be...